


barbed wire and moth wings

by HouserOfStories



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hadestown Fusion, Bees, Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, F/F, Gen, Greek Mythology And Lore, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Substance Abuse, and an extra car chase like the pirates in hamlet, it comes with an extra god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HouserOfStories/pseuds/HouserOfStories
Summary: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere important, there is a forest, and a train track, and a pair of gods.(A remix of arealsword’smelliferous.)
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Thomas Sanders & The Sides
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective, TSS Fanworks Collective Discord: January Remix Challenge!





	barbed wire and moth wings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [melliferous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674225) by [arealsword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealsword/pseuds/arealsword). 
  * In response to a prompt by [arealsword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealsword/pseuds/arealsword) in the [tss_fanworks_collective_discord_january_remix_challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tss_fanworks_collective_discord_january_remix_challenge) collection. 



> Title is from Hard Sell by The Crane Wives, since they were the only thing I listened to whilst writing this. How on earth was I supposed to not remix this fic (linked above)? Greek mythology _and_ Sanders Sides? I highly recommend giving it a read!

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere important, there is a forest, and a train track, and a pair of gods. In the forest, there are bumblebees and unexpected, deadly rattlesnakes. That probably isn’t important. Yet. The train tracks are in need of a train, and lead down, further down, and further down still. Not in the best condition, but not in the worst, as things in the middle of nowhere important ought to be.

“Down, down to Hadestown,” the first god says to the sun and the sky and the winding tracks. 

The second god replies, because the sun and the sky and the winding tracks make excellent conversation, but the sound of her own voice is much more interesting. “Florida first, actually.”

“Is there a difference?”

Seph, once Persephone before it became too long, wrinkles her nose. The road to hell is boring, full of potholes, and faintly homicidal, never mind that any company you find is awful. You see one band of corpse lugging idiots and you’ve seen them all. The train ride to hell, however, is a little more bearable. “It’s the scenic route.”

Hermes blinks (as much as he _can_ blink) five eyes at her then laughs, something that’s half a buzz and half almost genuine amusement. She’s never seen him genuine before and doubts this will be the first time. It’s the conman in him. Or it might be the sceptic in her, who knows. The sunlight is warm for Autumn, because she wouldn’t have it any other way, and she stretches out her arms to soak it all in. There are bees in the grass, amidst the flowers that probably weren't there this morning. It’s the quietest they’ll be for the next six months. It’s the loudest her thoughts will be for the next six months. Although that’s far too easily remedied.

“What’s in the suitcase?”

“Couple of imports. Gotta entertain myself somehow, haven’t I?” A crate of wine rattles around inside as she swings it side to side. There’s a bottle of something else in there too, something she’ll take out just to stare at when she’s up top and then barely think twice before throwing it down her throat when she’s underground. Souvenirs are so very hard to come by unless you know where to find them.

And Seph always knows where to find what she wants.

She hears the rumbling of the wheels before she sees the train. The sound echoes down the tunnel, dirtying itself with soot and sorrow and whatever animal decided to wander in and never come out. Red spider lilies are growing near the entrance. If they’ve spread further in, they’ve been swallowed up by the darkness already. 

It’s a shame; Hades always likes the spider lilies. Or, at least, she used to.

Hot air spills out over the grass, and her flowers wilt away. The buzzing in her ears starts to get louder, harmonising with a painful shriek as the train stops. It’s the same train she’s seen for centuries, with the same yellow tinted windows and the same iron wheels and the same faded black paintwork. She doesn’t hate it. That doesn’t mean she loves it either.

Missus Hades stands in the doorway of the carriage, long gold skirts pooling around her feet like the streams that cut through the forest and flow out to the sea. They shimmer white and cream and gold, and the sun plays with the colours for as long as it can. 

Hermes tilts his hat and says nothing. He sets off along the road, because he is the god of pickpockets and mischief, scrawled memorandums and letters on the back of pack horses, beaten lanes and roads less travelled. No amount of prayers could tie him down for long.

Seph boards the train, and leaves the sun and the sky and the winding tracks behind.

*

When they walk into her bar, skittish and hiding it badly, Seph doesn’t think twice. After a while you learn that the dead are all the same: put a drink in their hands and they’ll knock it back like anyone else; set a bee on them and they’ll tilt their head back like an ensemble in the mortal shows she never wants to see. You never notice a few more chorus members unless they bump elbows in line. You never notice a few less unless there’s a gap in the formation. 

Then they open their mouths, and they _talk_. Consider Seph thoroughly pushed out of the formation.

There’s probably a precision to which she grabs the glasses back, the liquid inside not daring to ripple. It comes and goes down here, like the tides that can’t touch a shore that doesn’t exist. Something to do with the pull of the moon and the pull of the honey, and how sometimes she can feel it soaking into her brain and clogging up her veins but sometimes she can’t. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere. Seph can’t bring herself to look for it.

“Don’t drink that!”

“We weren’t planning on it,” says the one with the ripped sash. He’s got some common sense then, and he kisses her hand and flirts theatrically. When she says she’s seen it all before, she _means_ it. Roman — and it half reminds her of fallen empires, but that’s far too melodramatic for the occasion — is more charming than the entire Underworld put together. Which isn’t hard, but it’s certainly refreshing.

She knows what they want before they ask, because no one comes waltzing down to somewhere like this without a good enough cause. She knows what they want afterwards too. Everyone wants to leave, wants to feel sunlight and see the sky and run through grassy fields. If the folks gathered in her bar could desire anything more than oblivion, if they kept more than a scrap of their souls, they’d fight tooth and nail for a chance to be alive again. Even if it was just for one blessed second.

“Permanent residents only,” she says, and it’s true. Seph is the only one who’ll ever see the sun again, and she still feels trapped half the time.

It’s a little odd, watching them move between tables with sharp eyes and emotion. Patton bites his lip, and it almost draws blood. The dead cannot bleed. The dead cannot feel. The dead cannot do a lot of things Seph is watching right now.

Everything from moonshine to sunshine spills out of bottles into smeared glasses. She grabs whatever’s closest; autumn breeze and April showers, melting frost and spring flowers. They bubble over the rim, colours that you couldn’t get anywhere else but her plain old parlour with its four faded gold and cream walls. Four walls, an eternal audience, and enough of the good stuff to drown the living twice over.

Enough of the good stuff to drown the living twice over, and more than plenty to satisfy the dead. Just as things down underground ought to be.

Eventually they walk out, and Roman probably thinks he’s being sneaky, nicking her stock on the sly. Perhaps he is — to mortal eyes the flick of his wrist as he pockets the bottle is almost unnoticeable. To mortal eyes. Seph is too old and too wary to fall for that, though she lets her eyes slide right on by as they leave. It glints scarlet through the fabric, a tiny shard of light in the shadowy streets they’re wandering down. She’ll let them have their fun for now.

(Figments of imagination don’t get a grave, or a body, or anything other than washed out memories. They’re not dead in the end, just _gone._ She’ll never be sure which is worse.)

*

_“I am your wife!”_ she roars, and the words scratch against her throat as she sweeps down the street. Roman and Patton huddle around a dead man smack in the middle of the underworld's grapevine. There’s others with them, and they all cling to him like they’re daring Hades to take him again. And that’s love, and it’s not like the one that called her down — the love that brews in a bottle and settles in oblivion. It’s not like the one that grows a garden then locks it away, leaving the weeds to fester and wither. Although that doesn’t mean it’s not something.

Hades riles up, and the bees and the shadows and the stiffs watch them quarrel. “When was the last time you acted like it?” she spits, and nothing has threatened to scorch the world more than godly fury.

In a street six hundred feet under, where the walls have ears and eyes and wings, and the people have honey in their veins instead of blood, two gods are fighting. They are the god of blossoming dirt and the flowers that force their way through the frost, and the god of sweetness and those equally bound. They are gods, and they are angry.

And then, they are listening.

Honey tumbles down Roman’s throat, the bottle drained dry when just a drop would do. He does not tremble. Instead, he sings, and sings, and does not stop singing.

And then, they remember. 

Once upon a time, before a kingdom rose crafted from crystallised honey, there was a lady with a granite-heart and a girl with a garden. They were gods, and they weren't gods, because no one walked the earth to worship them. There were others too. Others with the same eyes and the same wings and the same buzz-click-hum for a voice. But, amongst the clovers and the flowers and the trees and the ground, they only had eyes for each other. Gods do not forget; they have been around too long to simply let memories fade to dust. Sometimes, however, they need a reminder.

Roman stops singing, but his song remains. The notes hang in the air, and it is impossible to say what, exactly, they are waiting for.

Then Hades gives them the deal, and it’s one she knows as well as anything. An old one, and a fair one, and perhaps the hardest of all. It’s not a kind one. Never has been, never will — but it looks like it. Doubt will come in soon enough, and Seph cannot stop it. Nobody leaves. Others have tried, but nobody leaves. Except her.

Together, Seph and Hades watch seven people walk along the road from hell. Their fingers are entwined, and neither of them can remember being this close in a long, long time. There is a garden, hidden behind a fence on the edge of a wasteland, and it is filled with overgrown flowers and trees and colours plucked out of the most vivid imaginations and then some. It is filled with life. When she thinks of that garden, of ripping down the gates and letting the plants spread far and wide, Hades at her side, she allows herself to hope. 

And Seph doesn’t notice when a sprinkling of ash and dust and honey settles down on the streets, and she doesn’t notice when a tiny glass bottle lands in the shadows with a quiet _thump,_ carrying the dregs of burning whiskey and fallen empires.

Why would she? She’s got the rest of eternity ahead of her; it’s time to build herself a happy ending.

*

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere important, there is a forest, and a train track, and a god. In the forest, there are bumblebees and deadly, unexpected rattlesnakes. That was important, once. Just for an almost-blink of an eye, or for a day, depending on where you hail from. The train tracks are in need of a train, and wait patiently for the rumbling of wheels echoing out of a tunnel. They’re looking a little better, bordered by daisies poking their heads out of the dirt like they want to polish the metal with their petals. Still, they’re always looking a little worse for wear, but not too much, as things in the middle of nowhere important ought to look.

The god rarely stays in one place for long, but he makes an exception every six months. When the trees are threatening to blossom, with the frost starting to melt back into the earth, and animals poke their heads above the surface after hibernation. They’re all waiting for her to arrive.

Hermes knows this, and does not need to know it, because the withered remains of spider lilies in a deep, dark tunnel are whispering it to the wind. 

From the road, he can hear the screeching of tires. He knows one car is stolen, and the other is police. No one but him can hear the thief gasping for breath as she slams her foot down on the accelerator. No one but him can see the bag on the back seat, or hear her friend cackling as she clutches onto it. Everyone sees the little burst of speed he gives them though, and soon enough they disappear into the distance.

He is the god of pickpockets and mischief; what can he say? It’s the thief in him.

He is also the god of beaten lanes and roads less travelled. While the first will never be true, the second is not quite a lie. Once, the grass was pressed flat underneath a drooping tree, and if he does something that isn’t really squinting, he can see the shape it made. Two legs, two arms, a torso and a head, all still in one piece. Surrounded by six others. Surrounded by nothing but the sun and sky and blossoming dirt. 

Hermes picks up a clumsy two stick cross, undisturbed for all that it’s not. There are rotted scraps of something red cast close to it, recognisable for all that they aren’t. He hums, something which is more of a buzz, and presses it back into the ground amidst the snapdragons.

Cars still drive down the road, but there’s nothing that interests him anymore. Instead, he turns his head to the train track. A low rumbling rolls down the tracks, across the grass, weaving in between the trees before it sweeps out into nothingness. The forest turns towards it, looking for the swing of a familiar suitcase and the return of Spring. Seph always summons quite a welcome party. Hermes allows himself to smile, and walks away from the sticks and blossoms.

Life goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hello on tumblr at [@houser-of-stories!](https://houser-of-stories.tumblr.com/)


End file.
